About Me

Hi, my name is Erica Weiland. I am an independent writer and editor. I love putting information in order and helping people communicate their thoughts through the written word.

I’ve worked on projects for renewable energy companies, non-profits, legal software and services companies, and more. See my resume at LinkedIn.com.

I am available for copyediting and writing projects, including academic paper editing, blogging, article writing, internal or external corporate or nonprofit reports, and more. Contact me if you are seeking help with a project: erica *at* ericaweiland *dot* com

And check out my various writings below!

Never Buy Rosemary – Urban Foraging in Seattle

Years ago I was at a barter and a friend bartered me some dried strawberry tree fruits. They were delicious, sort of chewy with a lot of body and a nice fruit flavor (not really like strawberry, but tasty!). Riding along the Burke Gilman Trail between the U-District and Fremont… Read more

All over Seattle, unattended apple and plum trees are dropping fruit (and have been for a few weeks). Your neighbors may have trees you can pick, if you aren’t lucky enough to have a fruit tree of your own. Ask! Offer to leave them a box of picked fruit, and… Read more

Your standard Himalayan blackberry is an invasive weed that tends to start producing ripe fruit in August and finishes sometime mid-September with the straggler berries. Don’t encourage Himalayan blackberry in your yard unless you are prepared to deal with the consequences. It takes some serious goats to gnaw those things… Read more

Dandelions are not native to the Northwest US, but they sure are plentiful. Sometimes I dig up dandelion clumps in the vegetable beds and give them to our chickens – who will eat just about anything green. They’ll eat them down to the root in half an hour. But when… Read more

Our noble native salal is called t’áqa in Lushootseed, the Native American language spoken around much of Puget Sound (1). The berries are, in fact, edible, despite the claims of some sources. Salal grows well in shade and sun. This picture is of some salal on a pretty bare and… Read more

In June 2011, a group of us went on a weekend camping trip to Kalaloch, on the Washington coast. We camped in a forested campground right on the beach, and edibles were growing everywhere (though unfortunately it was too early in the season to eat most of them, and others… Read more

Fennel grows as a weed in Seattle, though if you’re looking for those luscious giant bulbs you see in the grocery store sometimes, you’re going to be disappointed. Our fennel is almost exclusively Foeniculum vulgare vulgare, which has long deep taproots and nothing bulbous, as I discovered when I eagerly… Read more

I’ve lived at my current house for four years, and it wasn’t until last week that I finally learned what the “holly” in the backyard really was. This “holly” has been growing unfettered for at least four years and had grown horizontally along a 10-foot section of fence. I have… Read more

About Rosemary is native to the Mediterranean, but it does great west of the Cascades (I can’t speak for elsewhere). Rosemary doesn’t like the cold; here in Seattle, I know of a few rosemary bushes that died out or suffered quite a bit as a result of our December 2008… Read more

Never Buy Rosemary is a guide to free and public urban foraging sites in Seattle, because free food is the best food and so much goes to waste. (Check out a comprehensive map of Seattle urban forestry and foraging at Falling Fruit, which includes public and private plants and trees… Read more

Interviews

Missed Part 1 of this interview? Check it out here. I asked Nathan about the recent failure of King County Proposition 1 to support Metro. Nathan: It’s a complicated question – there’s a number of different ways to answer it and think about it. [pauses] There was a 2009 audit… Read more

Nathan Vass is the friendliest bus driver I have ever seen. I rode his bus on May 1, 2012, it was the 3 or the 4, and was just floored by how friendly he was to everyone, how he put so much thoughtful and positive energy out making announcements and… Read more

Other

Here I’m going a bit off my usual other topics, to cover in more detail what happened when we tried to introduce two adult chickens as companions for our solo adult chicken. We had a difficult experience that ultimately turned out fine, but we were unprepared for the violence of… Read more